Football
Koeman: Look at the nomination. What am I supposed to do with these players? Asked the angry Barcelona coach
Barcelona fans are experiencing a major crisis. After a shameful 0:3 home defeat to Bayern, the league loss to Granada came when the Blaugranas even equalised in the 90th minute. Ronald Koeman blames his squad.
Barcelona fans are experiencing a major crisis. After a shameful beating at home to Bayern (0:3), the league loss to Granada came when the Blaugranas even equalized in the 90th minute. Ronald Koeman blames his squad.
The financial crisis has backed Barcelona into a corner. Two attacking stars, Lionel Messi and Antoine Griezmann, have left Catalonia. Memphis Depay and Luuk de Jong have replaced them, but so far things are not going well.
Fans are accusing coach Ronald Koeman of playing a completely different style to his own with Barcelona. The Blaugranas have long been known for tiki-taka, brisk ground passes at pace, imaginative combinations, but Koeman has ordered his team to do the opposite. Kicking balls into the box and trying to strike from centres.
That’s why Sevilla brought in De Jong, who is very strong in the air. In the last minutes of the game, when Barcelona wanted to equalise, Koeman sent on a pair of stoppers Piqué and Araujo, the latter actually equalising in the 90th minute with a header to make it 1-1.
Koeman, however, says he has no choice but to use this tactic because of the squad at his disposal.
“Look at the nomination. What am I supposed to do with these players? Play tiki-taka? We did what we had to do. We didn’t have more strikers on the bench, so I sent Piqué and Araujo on the spearhead. We don’t have speed on the wings, we don’t have players who can play one-on-one. This is not the Barcelona of ten or eight years ago,” Koeman complained in an interview with Cadena Ser.
Barcelona lost for the second time in the league for a draw, first sharing the points with Athletic Bilbao. They are currently in seventh place, but have a game in hand. In the Champions League, they lost to Bayern and Benfica will be a very unpleasant opponent.
Moreover, under Koeman, the chair is breaking easily, the dissatisfaction of the fans is growing, mainly because of the dull performances. At the press conference, he did not answer the question whether the draw with Granada would weaken his position.
Source: Cadena Ser